The construction of Thorvald Hansen's Tower in 1927
One day in 1926, Thorvald Hansen is lying on his hill in Byrum and realises that, unlike when he was a child, he can no longer see the whole island, but only the roofs of the houses in Byrum and a few trees here and there. Thorvald wants a better view of Læsø and decides to build himself a tower.
The first step was a trip to Skagen, where they had a beautiful lighthouse. Thorvald took a string and a stone with him on the trip, and when he arrived in Skagen, he climbed up the lighthouse, lowered his string with the stone at the end over the edge, and when the string hit the ground, Thorvald tied a knot in it. Now he knows how tall a tower must be to be a real tower, and he knows how tall his own tower on Læsø must be..."
One day in 1926...
To the surprise of many, Thorvald Hansen began preparations for the construction of the tower in 1926. It was to be a good 10 metres high. It would require many cartloads of sand and many bags of cement, which would certainly have had to be transported to the site if someone else had been the builder. But what Thorvald Hansen did was an example of what a person can achieve with patience and perseverance. With a bucket in each hand, he walked up the hill to the nearest gravel pit, 200-300 metres away, filled the buckets with sand and gravel and carried them home.
Using simple moulds that he had made himself, he began casting bricks for the tower while continuing to run his business. He had three moulds and could make three bricks in the morning, three at noon and three in the evening, each measuring 8 x 12 inches, or 20.3 x 30.5 cm. The stock of bricks grew day by day, and when it was large enough for construction to begin, he hired a good friend, Kristian "Puh Skie" Østergaard, to be the sole bricklayer for the tower. The bricklayer "Puh Skie" was not afraid of heights and built the tower without any safety equipment. The bricklayer began every sentence by saying "Puh Skie", as if building such a small tower was nothing to talk about. And that is how he got his nickname.
Like a giant cigar tube, the tower quickly shot up from the top of the hill, and one fine day it stood complete with a flag waving from the top, measuring 11 metres in height. But the following year, Hansen added another 3.5 metres to the tower, corresponding to one metre above the second white brick decoration. He subsequently added another 2.5 metres, from the start of the glazing holes to the current top, for a total of 17 metres.
Thorvald Hansen was fond of his tower, from which he could see all the way to the sea and dream of his days as a sailor. He also wanted to share the view with others, and everyone was allowed to climb the tower.
